Guild Wars 2

I like the idea with runes of speed. Though about it myself for better roaming and also because failing to hit with Dark Path or Chillblains can make it difficult to stay on target with daggers (though Spectral Walk helps a bit), and having almost 30k HP is not bad:-)

Didn’t really consider the usefulness of mark of blood in relation to stealth. Good point! Though I think I would not be able to keep my cool and use it for that due to spending an important dodge + the internal cooldown. For me, EB in Curses is reliable (even after the nerf) and is usefull in exact that scenario you describe when being jumped by 1+ melee.

May I ask if you have any particular rotations or openings? I havent really figured any specific combos out yet but go at it depending on circumstances.

Well its not build thats based around rotation, its quite simple and straightforwarded, mostly just 1 spam for dmg, but theres alot of neat small combos you can pull off with this build, and it has pretty decent skillcap.
Example – When in medium range and hes just kiting you.

DS>Tainted Shacles > Dark Path > Fear > Leave DS > Dark Pact > Dagger 1 spam

What this achieves is that while your dark path travels you fear him so he cant dodge + fearing him will make him turn back on you, then your gonna use dark pact while hes feared so he cant dodge tainted shacles and basicly when your dark pact lands then your tainted shacles will land too so hes in long immob + is turned away from you so he cant hit you with most skills. + Hes probobly gonna use defensive cooldowns all while beeing chilled and when immobilize is over you have ~2 second left DS recharge.

Heres a vid how to execute it – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd6NjtTaGVM&feature=youtu.be

Any comments on dhuumfire change ?

Lopez.7369:

Just to correct a misconception in this thread, Death Shroud is affected by toughness.

This build is awful solely because it takes Dhuumfire over Close to Death. There is no conceivable justification for that decision in a PvP environment in which burst is king. It’s also robs burning time from conditions that could actually use the burning damage to its potential.

The fact that you consider a build awful because it uses burning as condition coverage support and an attempt to get enemy players to react instinctively and clear a relatively unnecessary condition makes me question your input. I would personally take Close to Death over Dhuumfire, but the whole thing awful because of that one decision?

Really?

Lopez.7369:

Yes. Close to Death defines power necromancers, especially when paired with Chill of Death. It is the entire reason the build works.

Without the burst Close to Death provides, power necromancers do too little damage. And 1,200 damage over 2 seconds every 10 seconds comes nowhere close to making up for the damage loss.

Well there are power builds that dont even go 30 points in spite…
Though they are not considered meta at the moment for spvp.

You’ll never get better as a player if you confine yourself to the meta box. The only way the meta evolves is when players dare to think outside of it.

If you’re the team spiker, you probably want Close to Death. If you aren’t, I can see Dhuumfire being a potential thing.

Staff is a horrible small scale battle weapon for powermancers.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Staff is a horrible small scale battle weapon for powermancers.

I love comments like this. The very least you could do is try to justify why all of its utility is “horrible”, and what would be “better” and why for a Powermancer.

I mean, that’s the very least, if we exclude the amount of information you just provided to support your claim.

I love forumers like you. It doesnt matter how much info you give, because at the end of the day, staff is a horrible power weapon. I’m not doing the math for you.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I love forumers like you. It doesnt matter how much info you give, because at the end of the day, staff is a horrible power weapon. I’m not doing the math for you.

Thankfully you won’t go through the trouble, because the math would be intensely complicated to properly weigh the value of the utility brought with the Staff, even as power.

Ah well continue to use staff, idgaf.

Regeneration
Chill + poison
Best kind of condi removal aka transfer
AoE CC
Horrible?

You forgot the full 100% LF bar every 6.5s (10-15s in reality).

From 1200 range.

Such terrible crit, crit damage, and armor, oh but the hp makes it ok right?

Hi Leeto, thanks for the build and videos, very informative

I love the soul marks / mark of evasion sustain and the build in general has a nice appeal.

I have made one alteration to the traits for my own play style…

Ive taken 10 from spite and added it to blood for Quickening Thirst… I agree completely that combat control from dagger is unmatched and found the added healing and damage from Vampiric stacks up quite fast in a pvp environment. I also have just got a habit of ensuring that I have 25%+ speed available to me at all times, particularly for melee classes and i definitely feel that SWalk is too good to be used for a simple swiftness buff. It just plays better to me this way and the +100 vit adds to the lifeforce pool nicely.

I have also had a go at translating the build into a wvw setup where we unfortunately dont have access to Settlers stats.

I do value toughness to a certain level in wvwvw as i feel it necessary for small group play and it helps the necromancers less than outstanding mobility.

Lyssa runes are imo, just the greatest for power necromancer with golem.

Let me know what you think, but this is MY take on the build you gave me

So.. thanks i guess.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjMax7hb+a07JkJFfj2Ap49wFqHuD78hA-jkyAYMBRCCE9BgIAmALiGbVsIasqFMVZSVxCyeDlVpAEUZE-w

Sigil of bloodlust on the staff would be complemented by a second energy post changes

Yamedo.2561:

Such terrible crit, crit damage, and armor, oh but the hp makes it ok right?

If you understood how Life Force worked, you wouldn’t have to sarcastically ask that question.

Staff is fine for this build since he is using soul marks. You gain a lot of survivability using staff, soul marks, and mark of evasion and keep in mind that he is playing in sPvP point control, not in an open field 1v1 – so people are going to be triggering the marks.

I agree with Lopez (without calling the build awful). I can’t see any reason to take dhuumire over close to death. His lifeblasts are traited to crit. How could dhuumfire possibly be better than 20% more damage on his crit damage lifeblasts on low health targets?

Heavy target golem –
Dagger nr1 spam only
With Close to death ~14 seconds
With Dhuumfire ~15 seconds
Life Blast spam only
With Close to death – 11 lifeblasts
With Dhuumfire – 10 lifeblasts (9 if you let burn finish him off instead of casting extra one)

Dhuumfire incrases your dps always, close to death only if target is below 50%.
You need condition removal to avoid dhuumfire, you can line of sight, dodge, CC the necro, stay above 50% etc. to avoid close to death dmg incrase.
Dhuumfire helps to protect your CC conditions from condi removal, close to death just incrases your already high dmg.

For me personally Close to Death is garbage trait and i would never use it cause its just plain dmg incrase and is very situational, but i understand people who like to see big numbers yet i dont understand how can you flame dhuumfire when its basicly same dmg incrase yet 10 times better trait by design.

Leeto.1570:

Heavy target golem –
Dagger nr1 spam only
With Close to death ~14 seconds
With Dhuumfire ~15 seconds
Life Blast spam only
With Close to death – 11 lifeblasts
With Dhuumfire – 10 lifeblasts (9 if you let burn finish him off instead of casting extra one)

Dhuumfire incrases your dps always, close to death only if target is below 50%.
You need condition removal to avoid dhuumfire, you can line of sight, dodge, CC the necro, stay above 50% etc. to avoid close to death dmg incrase.
Dhuumfire helps to protect your CC conditions from condi removal, close to death just incrases your already high dmg.

For me personally Close to Death is garbage trait and i would never use it cause its just plain dmg incrase and is very situational, but i understand people who like to see big numbers yet i dont understand how can you flame dhuumfire when its basicly same dmg incrase yet 10 times better trait by design.

I wonder if some people are coming from WvW and don’t realize how different sPvP really is from a damage/stat perspective. Close to Death in WvW turns you into an absolute spike machine where you can nuke someone for 8k+ with a single LB (when it procs Chill of Death) if they’re not in Toughness gear when below 50%. You just aren’t going to see those numbers in sPvP, and the % damage benefit you get from Close to Death is going to remain the same while Dhuumfire is going to increase, since your condition damage isn’t changing between the two.

Interesting test, though. I’m sold enough to try it the next time I sPvP.

Leeto.1570:

Heavy target golem –
Dagger nr1 spam only
With Close to death ~14 seconds
With Dhuumfire ~15 seconds
Life Blast spam only
With Close to death – 11 lifeblasts
With Dhuumfire – 10 lifeblasts (9 if you let burn finish him off instead of casting extra one)

Dhuumfire incrases your dps always, close to death only if target is below 50%.
You need condition removal to avoid dhuumfire, you can line of sight, dodge, CC the necro, stay above 50% etc. to avoid close to death dmg incrase.
Dhuumfire helps to protect your CC conditions from condi removal, close to death just incrases your already high dmg.

For me personally Close to Death is garbage trait and i would never use it cause its just plain dmg incrase and is very situational, but i understand people who like to see big numbers yet i dont understand how can you flame dhuumfire when its basicly same dmg incrase yet 10 times better trait by design.

No mention of the stats or anything else. That isn’t really a fair comparison unless you are doing it with no gear on what so ever and even in that case the duration extension just by getting Dhuumfire would make it have an edge.

Any chance you retry with a FULL Powermancer build (30/10/0/0/30) and then a test with a condition build (30/30/10/0/0/0?) As surely the results are dependent on what your other spent trait points were, what your over all stats were, what sigils, runes and accessory you were using as well….

Ye im trying to get this build on myself in WvW too, but dont want to change all my gear cause no idea what patch will bring.
In PVP i have continued to play this build since i posted it here, and atm i consider it my main build, the more i play it the more potential you feel behind it.
Hopefully the build will be only stronger with the new dhuumfire and who knows if they implement precision + power + toughness amulet then this build might become absolute killer.

If they indroduce kinghts amulet (toughness,power,precision) would you change the amulet?
I mean vitality scales nicely with necros but i feel with all the condi removel i dont need the extra vitality and toughness helps more against those pesky thieves.

@armagedon
I have no idea wtf are you talking about. People asked me why dhuumfire over close to death in MY BUILD, so i gave rough comparison and explained reason behind it. Why would i compare it with dhuumfire in condi spec?

@muchacho
Ofcourse i would switch, necro already have high hp pool and is anti condition so toughness is alot more useful than vitality. atm i play with berserker + settler jewel, but havent tested it in tourneys properly and dont want to update anything before i see what new patch brings.

settler? typo for valkyre?

When, first time, I didn’t believe that powermancer may work in tPvP, now I do.
Changed build in my way, going 20/20/0/0/30 without staff etc, other utilities, but core idea: Barbarian Amulet – works suprisingly well.

Rym.1469:

When, first time, I didn’t believe that powermancer may work in tPvP, now I do.
Changed build in my way, going 20/20/0/0/30 without staff etc, other utilities, but core idea: Barbarian Amulet – works suprisingly well.

It’s pretty surprising where potential lies when a player/community turns stubborn and refuses to try.

I found zerker works, but you need the 10 in blood for some extra hp, i tryed keeping 10 in curses for weakness and to be able to switch to regular wells burster, but if u wanna go d/d , take the extra hp. And speed runes

Leeto, i was running a build that uses alot of the same concepts and thought process, but really whiffed on how strong 3% lf generation on marks could be. Thanks for the post! If you have an updated build i would love to see it, as i keep tweaking mine and finding new ways to play this core build.

Mazzak.7536:

Leeto, i was running a build that uses alot of the same concepts and thought process, but really whiffed on how strong 3% lf generation on marks could be. Thanks for the post! If you have an updated build i would love to see it, as i keep tweaking mine and finding new ways to play this core build.

Oh in past month ive played alot around with this build, have tried different variations, dropped spectral walk for blinding well and used chill on blind for more support in teamfights. But anyway my todays version of this build would be – http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW4YjMax7da+a87JEoH7CuAiRFOGqHuD78hA-TgAA2CvIYSxkjJDTSmsMB

Amulet is still a problem, i dropped barbarian for berserker and once i got grip on it i was fine, but when playing against top 50 players it feels like lacking survibility so i started to use barbarian again, tomorrow gonna test berserker more, maybe im just not good enough.
Lately ive been thinking about 3% LF on marks too, just few days ago i decided that maybe it is not a must trait but still i cant find a better alternative trait. -30% cooldown on DS sounds cool but it has no real use, all it would give is to let me tank dmg more ofthen, but as i generate less life force then basicly i can just take less damage more times.
Have any cool takes on this build? Im almost somewhat dissapointed that multiple months after making this build ive barely changed anything.

Your 2nd update was best imo. Zerker amu + speed runes combo. 24k hp is just enough, you get the crit.dmg back and the movement helps us alot. Both in melee and when running.

The top 50 is more a class issue. Youll die eventualy, unlike shad, who if u let him with 3hp will come and kill u back in a 1v2 Its just a class mechanic and untill u actualy gain some hp back in DS its just a matter of time. You win if enemy overextends

Im a bit worse player, but just to give my share:
-even though i criticized it (still do), i go with spectral pull over corrupt boon. temple& khylo at least.
-the DS recharge + stabilty (+weaknes shroud) works good on zerker, since u got enough dmg anyway. On barb amu, the added crit chance is a must since youll be camping in DS sooner or later

My current build runs Training of the Master over spinal shivers. I do this because I am running bone minions over worm and golem over plague. The bone minions are just there for blast fodder, which is nice spike damage on your initial burst and aoe blind in your wells. Also I run lyssa runes, for obvious reasons since I’m running golem. The extra stun from golem seems to beastly to give up from a burst standpoint, though obviously provides much less team support. Thanks for the update on your build.

The build itself is okay. The only thing I really noticed is that you sometimes press random skills even though it’s not needed or just press them in wrong moments.

Don’t waste your cooldowns like that.

I already know myself that making mistakes doesnt improve my results thanks.
Try recording your gameplay and then review it, you will understand that you play alot worse then you think.

Pffft your crazy no one ever hits the wrong button by accident or blows a skill when they shouldn’t have you are clrearly the only one who ever does that on a necro…..

This build is fun, haters gonna hate F em Leeto, you did good

This is a fun build to play.
But now its getting tougher as I play against r50+ sometimes. (today I played against a full team of r60+ and I was highest rank on our team and we were put to shame, lol).

Leeto, I went back to your original 1st build,the one with corrupt boon,spectral walk and flesh wurm, I prefer it atm, I use barbarian and berserker amulet and I am currently trying Rune of the Wurm ( I chose this by accident in a rush to replace a rune set). I seem to be doing well against good players. I can tell a good player, they make you think and I like that.

I am not terribly experienced at tpvp or spvp but 1v1 I tend to win against similar ranks. I must admitt tho my success rate has gone up since using Letto’s build and I think Dhummfire works very well with dagger.

But I cannot theory craft a build and have to rely on other players to feed me builds and this is my current favorite build for necro. I did try rune of the Eagle but can’t remember what I thought about it as it was a few weeks ago. Now I got Wurm runes and it seems to do well but like I said, I didn’t choose it cos I know what I’m doing, it was more a case of ’that’ll do for now’. The extra 3% damage with dhummfire and a very high health pool seems to do the trick but there is prolly alot better runes.

I am looking forward tho to trying Leeto’s new updated build.

Runes of speed is interesting! Do you miss the extra condition removal from Lyssa 6?

Also, have you thought about swapping out spectral walk for spectral armour, or even grasp for another snare? I don’t think you really need the swiftness with those runes.

spectral armor works with speed runes, just depends on what ur lacking. if u misplace urself the armor could save u, but the walk has more uses with its jukes (Line of sight, scouting far, ledge jumping, and the most funny one- shadowstep stomp with wurm).

Note armor will reduce 33% of dmg (only power), the walk can reduce 100% with a good line of sight juke.

Edit: i personaly dont miss the lyssa cleanse. offhand dagger is amazing. u do need to compensate the stabilty loss with better movement

Oh in my last version with speed runes i used well of power, but i have returned to my original build (only berserker amulet instead of barb).
Lyssa runes and 2 teleports is just crucial for survibility with this build, and golem lets you get off some nice cc+burst chains.
Till you really get grip of the build i think easiest would be speed runes + well of power instead of spectral walk.
Spectral walk and lyssa is better for high ranked play same as berserker amulet but barbarian is easier till you learn to generate life force nicely enough to survive with it.

Interesting, so you pop SW before getting into the fight just so you can teleport out of it and reset if things go sour? I tried doing that a few times but I always felt the teleport window wasn’t long enough for me to figure out if the fight was going my way.

Flesh Wurm should obviously be much better since it lasts till the minion is killed, but I still haven’t got the hang of its restrictions. It seems to be pretty inconsistent as to how much it’ll let you teleport through walls or on different levels. Some places you can put it on top of a ledge (like the ones around graveyard on Legacy) and when you activate it it’ll teleport you riught there, but other places it’ll just teleport you to the bottom of the ledge. I haven’t figured out its rules, if it has any.

Leeto.1570:

Oh in my last version with speed runes i used well of power, but i have returned to my original build (only berserker amulet instead of barb).
Lyssa runes and 2 teleports is just crucial for survibility with this build, and golem lets you get off some nice cc+burst chains.
Till you really get grip of the build i think easiest would be speed runes + well of power instead of spectral walk.
Spectral walk and lyssa is better for high ranked play same as berserker amulet but barbarian is easier till you learn to generate life force nicely enough to survive with it.

I tried out your original build, at least i think
it’s pretty nice, in first few matches i was figuring it out a bit, not sure how to use it..
But after some games noone wanted to decap the point i was and i basicly had some free roaming around my point hunting for players.. 1v1 the build works a charm..
but with more necro’s on the team, or an abundance of warriors on the other the build really rely’s on you judging the situation because there are no real second chances.. either it works perfectly or you fail miserably..
mark of blood on dodge is indeed quite a nice extra to have with enegy runes..
plague.. (im addicted to plague.. ) im wondering if you use it..?
Anyway..I really enjoyed the build, kept me playing for a couple of hours in spvp.
I was a bit sceptical about the speed runes, but soon discovered them to be great when you know how to kite.

NB: we should really reroll with 3 necro’s on the team ^^

since mightymeak gave his royal blessing over the patch, i hope we can find something to hurdle over dhuumfire nerf.

the reliable dps is this builds trademark, i realy wish it stays playable

Updated the original post with my current tpvp version (speed runes + well of power + plague)
and the no dhuumfire version im currently testing (20/0/0/20/30)

hi you play same build after the patch?

Updated my current tpvp build.
And yes i took close to death now so once enemy hits 50% i become magicly skilled and have easy time killing him.

how u use inteligence on staff? I got very used to the hydromancy+energy as I switch to staff when on defense, pretty much like thieves with shortbow.

I mean the autos arent bad on glassies if youre kiting, but if youre switching to staff, wont you activate a mark first? and does piercing/aoe marks count towards the next 3x attack 100% crit ?

I feel that most of the time if im on d/d and have to switch to staff then its because i gotta remove some condis like immob or the target is running away, so xfering immob with 3k hit and then following it up with 2x 1.6k`s works very nice or just having guaranteed crit autoattacks to finish off runner.
Dont have many situations where im on D/D and want to get away from people, but if that happens then i feel that chillblains is enough.
Ye AoEs consuming all 3 intelligence stacks is lame but mostly if i need those guaranteed staff crits then its in 1v1/2 situations.

This is what I am currently running for my dagger/focus powermancer in tpvp.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAW4djc0UcbLNu2whbCchC63MAaho+Aqbjz4ZB-TJBFwACuIAl2foaZAAPBAA